1. Field of the Invention
The disclosed embodiments of the present invention relate to video processing, and more particularly, to lane identification method apparatus in a lane departure warning system for detecting if a vehicle departs from its lane by lane.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The lane departure warning system is an active driving safety technique for detecting if a vehicle departs from its lane. When a driver drives a vehicle to depart from the current lane without utilizing a blinker due to mental incompetence or negligence, the lane departure warning system will detect this abnormal situation and issue a warning message to remind the driver to drive the vehicle back to the lane.
The existing lane departure warning system architecture can be divided into the following types: the image sensing type, the laser sensing type, and the infrared sensing type. The most common type is the image sensing type, and this type of lane departure warning system will record the drive video first, analyze the drive video, and judge if lane departure occurs according to the current lane identified by referring to images of the road.
However, the roadway is usually marked by various kinds of lane lines with different shapes (e.g., solid lines, dotted lines, broken lines, solid double lines, broken double lines, solid/broken lines, and channelizing lines), and also there are various kinds of signs and symbols painted on the roadway, thus making the lane identification process complicated. For example, the lane departure warning system has to compare the lane markings in the drive video with all of the known lane lines by using complex algorithms, which usually requires a large amount of computation to complete. In addition, the accuracy of the lane identification is also influenced by environmental factors. For example, the poor and bad weather, including the night time, the rainy weather, etc., causes poor visibility and then makes the lane departure warning system hardly to capture clear drive images, which affects the accuracy of lane recognition. Furthermore, unnecessary warnings may be issued erroneously to confuse the driver. Therefore, to improve the accuracy of lane identification and the reliability of a lane departure warning system has become an important issue in the field.